Willyama aborigines had lived in the area before European settlement, but only transitionally due to the lack of water supplies. The explorerCharles Stuart, looking for an inland sea, passed by the area and named it 'Broken Hill' after an oddly shaped topographical feature. Pastoralists would eventually make it to the barren region in the 1860s, but it was not until a boundary rider called Charles Rasp noticed in 1883 that the oddly shaped topographical feature held tin deposits. He took some samples, discovered that it was actually silverchloride, and he quickly claimed sixteen acres of the hill. A syndicate of seven was set up and in 1885 they hit upon a rich vein of silver in what turned out to a massive seven kilometre by 220 metre wide silver-lead-zinclode. They formed the The Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP), which became Australia's largest company until more tech-y companies became more capitalised on the ASX.

The BHP mines attracted labourers, prospectors and other people of all nationalities and ilk, and so a municipality was eventually founded in 1887 out of all the ramshackle hotels, hootches and saloons. The population shot up from nil in 1886 to 20,000 in five years, leading to problems like dysentry and typhoid because of the unsanitary conditions. Over the next few decades hundreds of men would die in mining accidents, lead poisoning and lung disease.